Continuing my series of short guides to the different factions of Fall from Heaven 2 (see my posts on the Ljosalfar and the Grigori in my original blog), here’s one for the Calabim. They’re something of one-trick pony faction, and pay a significant price for that trick, but it’s a mighty impressive one. This is because the Calabim are the only faction in the game with access to vampires and once they manage to get the blood engine flowing, they become pretty much unstoppable.
What does being a vampire in Fall from Heaven 2 entail? For starters, all units with this promotion get a small 10% boost to combat strength and slightly increased healing whether they’re inside their own cultural borders or out on the campaign trail. But the real benefit are the three special abilities all vampires have. First, any vampire can gift vampirism to any other friendly units in the same tile, as long as it is level 6 or above. Second, a vampire can feed on a Bloodpet unit, the Calabim version of the basic Warrior, to heal, gain additional movement and be able to attack again.
But it’s the final ability that is the real kicker. A vampire inside a friendly city can feast on the population, reducing it by one and earning experience points equal to the size of the city. This means that if you use feast in a size 20 metropolis, your vampiric unit instantly gains 20 experience points, which is enough for several promotions. This can be done over and over again so long as you have population available, making it very easy to create super powerful units without the risk of actual combat.
Combine feast with gift vampirism and you begin to see the possibilities. How about vampiric mages and priests who are able to eat population to gain levels? If you’ve built the Pact of the Nilhorn and managed to nurture the giants you get from that Wonder to level 6, you can make them vampiric giants! This doesn’t work on non-living units like catapults, but everything else, including end-game units like paladins and phalanxes, are fair game. Contrary to expectations, there are no downsides to being a vampire at all.
The problem for the Calabim is that they don’t actually start the game with any vampires which means the first priority of the Calabim player is to make a beeline for them. There are two paths: one, research towards Feudalism to build the standard Vampire unit, or two, research towards Fanaticism to be able to build the Calabim unique hero Losha Valas who starts with the Vampirism promotion. Either path works, but generally if you’re emphasizing the builder approach normal Vampires work better while aggressive warmongers would do well to get Losha Valas, especially as going down that path also gives you a leg up on getting Brujahs, the next tier of vampires.
The same thing goes for choosing between the two Calabim leaders available. Alexis is more suited for warmongers while Flauros is more suited for builders. Do note that the Calabim cannot be pure builders as their powerful vampiric abilities are only useful in combat so a good Calabim player will need to go to war eventually. Another reason why the Calabim aren’t good builders is their major drawback: their inability to build Elder Councils or Alchemy Labs. This means that the Calabim will never be able to compete against the other factions in a straightforward research race and must use warfare to gain an advantage.
Domestically, the obvious strategy for the Calabim is to build huge farm cities in order to feed their vampire army. The classic combination of running the Aristocracy and the Agrarianism civics side by side works well for this. Every available flatland tile should be covered with farms, so the Calabim has little need to build cottages at all. The faction also gets a unique building, the Breeding Pit, which produces 2 food all by itself and retains 20% food after population growth, but adds 1 to unhealthiness.
The second unique building that the Calabim get is the Governor’s Mansion, which is required for building standard Vampires. It replaces the standard Courthouse, but instead of the -40% maintenance that the original building gives, has just -25% maintenance instead with a -25% war weariness bonus tacked on. This is strong hint that the Calabim aren’t supposed to build huge sprawling empires and should be at war most of the time. The Mansion also makes 1 additional population unhappy but then gives you bonus hammers for each unhappy population in your city. The presence of both of these buildings ensures that Calabim cities will tend to be huge but sickly and unhappy affairs.
Externally, the Calabim will want to wage war both to weaken the builder factions who will become too powerful if left unchecked and to continue feeding their vampires. Remember to also bring along a supply of Bloodpets with your armies to maximize the utility of your vampires. All of their buildable vampiric units start with a small but very useful set of spells that help them while on the warpath. Having easy access to the Haste spell for example ensures that their armies waste little time getting to the enemy.
One problem is that Haste doesn’t work on inanimate units so the Calabim might want to forgo the use of siege engines. Instead, consider using the giants from Pact of Nilhorn to reduce enemy fortifications and fire mages to do collateral damage. Higher level vampires should be able to summon expendable Spectres that can help to weaken strong defenders while the Brujah vampires can do collateral damage as an innate ability.
Choosing a religion as the Calabim is a bit difficult as they have few obvious synergies with any of them. Due to their happiness problems, the Calabim will likely want to grab one of the early religions quickly with the option of switching to another one later in the game. Of the early religions, the Octopus Overlords is perhaps the most immediately useful especially if you start near the sea. It provides the player with Stygian Demons which can be a nice supplement to your vampiric forces and opens the possibility to build the Tower of Complacency in your largest farm city, instantly eliminating all unhappiness in it.
Both Fellowship of Leaves and Runes of Kilmorph have their uses as well, the former for providing health for cities and the latter for providing cash but both also turn your faction away from evil which I personally dislike. Later in the game I have a fondness for going with the Council of Esus because I like the idea of a mysterious nation full of invisible vampires, but even going for such odd choices as The Order can work. The Calabim should probably avoid the Ashen Veil however despite the appeal of a combination army of demons and vampires. This because allowing the Armageddon Counter to get too high will wreck havoc with their farm cities.
Since they can’t build arquebuses and cannons, the Calabim reach their apogee when they have full access to vampires and possess enough farm cities to feed them experience points at a reasonable rate. At this point the player should push hard to maximize these strengths. The promotions from all the free levels needs to be carefully chosen to match specific threats. Always be mindful that while vampires with lots of promotions are extremely powerful, the Calabim will most likely have fewer military units than other factions and your vampires can still be brought down by superior numbers.
As usual, there’s no need to try to keep every city that you conquer especially when it’s a long way from your capital and is hard to defend. The great thing about being the Calabim in this case is that instead of being forced to raze and abandon such cities, you can feed every single population in them to your vampires who are then much more powerful as they march to the next target.
Finally, the Calabim needs to decide when they want to fire off their Worldspell, River of Blood. Casting it instantly adds two population to each of your cities, while causing all other cities in the world to lose two population each. Used early in the game, it can basically double your score relative to everyone else. Save it for later, and you can get a ton of population with which to boost your vampires while weakening everyone else. The choice is yours.
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